hmm; With a range of 1.5miles, many homes, dorms, and business complexes will be seen, BUT even with goofy SSIDs and good encryption, the cross-talk on adjcent channels and direct competition on the same channel will create massive chaos in getting a reliable connection.

I started using virus names a few years ago when I first became certified as a Cisco wireless engineer and through that process learned exactly how little protection, well truth is zero protection, hiding your ssid provides. At any one time there are approximately 35 broadcasted SSIDs and 15 non-broadcasted that I can see from my apartment. A handful of them are people's full names. A handful are addresses, including apartment #'s. A bunch are unchanged default.

I monitor the airwaves 24/7 and the difference between the connection attempts made to my networks (all virus names, including one called macdefender) and the networks listed above is staggering. In a 60 day sample I'll see 5 to 10 different MACs attempt connection. Most of which are machines I recognize. Networks with home addresses get 500-1000 attempted connections. Networks with default names get 400-900 while SSID's with peoples names get 400-700. Networks with non-broadcasted SSIDs average 300-600, most multiple attempts from the same MACs in short spurts.

Of the 50 or so networks I see regularly, 10% still use WEP and I don't need to tell you the ease at which one can get onto those networks. 10% still have no encryption, not surprisingly, most of those also have their SSIDs not broadcasted, a clear signal that the general public still believes there is safety in that procedure. About 30% use WPA/TKIP, almost as unsecure as using WEP. And the remaining using WPA2/TKIP or WPA2/AES, the latter being the most secure, but with the huge # of packets flowing through the air, an all wired network is still the safest way to work. And let's face it, not many of us live in a 10,000+ sqft home where it takes more than a minute to get to every corner of our homes.

I still remember getting my first scanner as a child and the ease with which I could hear conversations held on cordless phones for a 2 mile radius. A few years later I could listen in on cell phone conversations for a 5 mile radius. Then cordless phone makers and cell phone manufacturers started using DSS technology, something my first car based scanner had very little trouble deciphering. Now I used that scanner for good, for the most part, but my point is that the technology has changed, become more sophisticated, but so has the technology to monitor.